Luann in College
by beb
Summary: Luann awakes from a terrible dream and realizes that everything she thought had happened over the last two years were just a dream. Now in College surrounded by new friends...and a couple of old enemies, Luann struggles to survive in this brave new world
1. Chapter 1

Chapter I - It was all just a dream...

Luann sat up in bed with a start, sweat beading on her face, leaving her hair in stringy clumps. She looked around the darkened dorm room and shuddered. It was nothing like where she had been a moment ago in her dream.

She stood up and momentarily wished her dorm room had a sink so she could splash some water on her face. She'd have to put in a bathrobe and go down to the communal bathroom if we wanted to do that. While trying to decide whether to do that, there was a pounding on her door.

"Luann!" A woman shouted through the door. "It's Allison, the RA. Are you all right?" The pounding on the door resumed.

Luann drifted to the door and opened bit. She peered out and asked, "What's the matter?"

"Are you all right? Is there anyone else in there with you. Did they do anything to you?" Allison was a tall woman, with short brown hair, enormous shoulders. She was a senior on the tennis team.

"I'm fin," Luann told her, "I just had a bad dream."

"It must have been a doozy because we could hear you scream all the way the hall."

"Sheesh." Luann thought then peered down the hall. It was filled with girls of all shapes and sizes and dressed in whatever they had on at the moment. "I screamed?" Luann asked, confused. "Wow... Look, I'm sorry I woke you all up. It was just a dream."

Allison turned to the girls crowded behind her. "You heard Luann, it was just a dream. So everyone back to bed." She made brushing movement with her hands, "shoo, shoo," she added. Turning back to Luann, she asked, "Are you sure you're going to be all right? Do you want to talk about your dream. I've found that talking over a disturbing dream with someone else is a great way to make them less threatening."

Luann was about to decline but thought about it. Yeah, talking it over with someone would help settle her nerves. What she really would like was to talk it over with Bernice but Bernice was at Harvard or, according to her dream, blown to bits. Luann opened the door all the way. "Yeah, come on in."

She turned on a desk lamp, which provided a shadowy weak light. She slumped on her bed. Allison drew the chair out from the desk, swung it around, straddling the seat in a mannish fashion. With behavior like that and her broad shoulders Luann wondered not for the first time either Allison was transgender. Not that there was anything wrong with that; she just had trouble getting her head around the idea.

"Well," Allison prompted.

Luann wasn't sure where to start so she pointed across the room to where an identical bed-wardrobe-desk combination pressed against the wall. "What the deal? I thought I was supposed to have a roommate named Dez but it's been nearly a week and there's no sign of Dez but there are all these people who keep coming saying that Dez said they could dump their stuff here."

"Did you ever think to tell them 'no?"

Luann felt flustered. "Well, ah, I mean Dez said they could..."

Did Dez ever ask you if they could. No, because she's never showed up. Until then you have final say over what can be left here. And if and when Dez shows up, she's still going to have to get your OK. Dorm rules. So what have you got here." Allison stood up and walked over to the pile on Dez's desk. "Is that a weasel?" She pointed to a wire cage.

"Sunny said Dez said she could leave it here."

"Dorm rules. No pets. You'll have to tell Sunny to come and get it."

"I haven't seen Sunny since..."

"Then call Animal Control." Allison turned to the potted plant on the desk, stroked it's leaves, then smelled her fingers. "What's this?" she asked ominously.

"A plant?" Luann hadn't really looked at it.

"A ... 'plant.' What kind of a plant?"

"I don't know. A fern?"

"Do you know what pot is?"

"I never touch the stuff."

"This is a pot plant, Luann. Who brought it here?"

"Some guy, I didn't get his name. He's tall, thin, has long, straight blond hair that comes down to his waist. I wish I had hair like that." Luann fingered her sweat-dampened hair for a second. "He looks like one of those 80s hair groups, like Scorpion."

"I know who you mean. Everyone calls him Hair. Stupid name. Well, this has got to go and Hair is in big trouble." Allison picked up the plant and turned to go.

"I thought we were going to talk about my dream?"

"Oh..." Allison set the plant back down and turned her chair around and this time sat on it normally. "So tell me about it..."

"I dreamed-" Luann paused to decide where to begin. "It was an incredibly vivid dream and it just seemed to go on forever. It was almost like I was living someone's life. Anyway it ended when The Fuze blew up killing all my friends and family."

"The Fuze?" Allison prompted

"It was like this crazy coffehouse, theater, event venue my parent had decided to invest all their money in. Anyway, I had just had an argument with Quill over the amount of time he was spending with Pru and decided I needed to get out and calm down. I hadn't gone a block when The Fuze exploded, killing everyone. I guess that's when Iscreamed because I woke up right after."

"Sounds like separation anxiety. A lot of Freshmen get that. This is often the first time they've been away from home and it hits them every hard."

"No." Luann shook her head. "In the first place Quill and I were just friends, nothing more, and he went back to Australia after graduation. He was here because his father was working on some project here at Muni U. and left when the project was done."

"Maybe you were wishing you and Quill were more than just friends..." Allison suggested.

"Well, he was kind of hunky, but it was obvious that he was just a surfer dude who had no goals or ambitions. In my dream, though, he had decided he was going to be an actor, for some reason we got real close, then he went to New York for a week and came back with some actress friend. But they were 'just friends' the way Quill and I used to be. For some reason I found myself really jealous about this."

"Maybe..." Allison began, pausing as if sorting through her mind for an an appropriate response.

"Look," Luann interrupted, "if I wanted to be psychoanalyzed I'd call Bernice. She knows me and she's read more books on abnormal psychology then you have. My dream is weird because I dreamed that Gunther had run off to Peru with his girlfriend. I know she asked him to do that but Gunther's too much of a momma's boy to ever go. He instead he took a scholarship to MIT. Bernice got in to Harvard. I'm sure she can explain why I dreamed she was Dez's roommate instead of me. I dreamed Delta went to Howard University, instead of being down the hall here. Maybe I screamed because I realized that Tiffany and her little sycophant, Crystal were here, too. They were just a pain in the neck in high school. I was hoping I could avoid them in collage..."

"So you're going to be OK?" Allison asked. She sounded anxious to keave.

"So, sure. If I have any more weird dreams I'll run them by Bernice. I'll try not to scream at night."

"OK, then. I'll take this plant and talk to Hair in the morning. Don't warn him. OK? Oh, and get rid of the weasel."

Plant in hand, Allison was through the door leaving Luann along in the dark.

* * *

The current (2016) storyline in Luann is so horrid that I seriously wish they'd pull a "Dallas" and erase the last two year's continuity. Which is what I did here. Reportedly the goal was to transition Luann to young adulthood, surround her with new wacky character to freshen up the 34 year old series. What we got instead was a series centered on Bernice, who had moved into a college dorm and was surrounded by wacky dorm-mates and got caught up in wacky college life. Even when the strip shifted it's POV to Luann, it was Luann sitting passively in an art class led by a buffoon. It wasn't about Luann at all. The only other thing was an occasional strip where Luann talks to Quill but Quill suddenly was all about being an actor and indifferent to how Luann felt. The other problem with the strip is that story arcs are never resolved. Like this week where Luann "seems" to breaking up with Quill but at the end of the week she just walks away without saying those three little words - 'we are through.' Next week she could groveling back to Quill who promises to be a better man. But men never change.

So this is how I would re-boot the storyline. Bernice is gone and Luann has taken her rightful place at the center of the strip. Gunther's gone because he's become annoying. Delta is back. She had been left out of the strip because she had become a shrill one-note character. Because #blacklivesmatter I think we ought to bring her back and having her try to organize a BLM chapter in one of the whitest schools in comics. Tiffany remains because Luann needs an antagonist. And I've added Crystal because I think there's a lot of energy in the Crystal-Knute relationship. I see Crystal as a condescending snob, much like Tiffany, but she's also clearly in love with the witless goofball. So I can see a lot of conflict in their relationship as Crystal tries to study and Knute tries to drag her off to concerts, raves and dances. Knute would not be in college, he would be trying to break into professional skateboarding. From time to time Crystal is going to kick Knute out the door, but because she loves him always comes back and forgives him. Sunny, Hair and the other who were supposed to be Dez's wacky friends will have to be introduced again - only this time with personalities.

I'd started written another story about Luann starting college. I was going to abandon it but now, with a little re-writing should be made to fit into with this story.


	2. Chapter 2

"A little help."

Luann had just sat down on the steps outside the Theater Arts building. She was digging in her backpack for an apple she'd packed for lunch when the voice interrupted her.

She looked up, then to the right then to the left. There was no one else on the Quadrangle.

"A little..." the voice began again, ending with a gasp, Then began again. "Up here."

Luann turned towards the building and gasped, a man was hanging on the side of the building over the entrance.

Muni U., founded a century ago, was built along classical lines. Six large buildings faced off across a grassy common oddly the dimensions of a football field. Marring the symmetry were two additional buildings, one a fifty's era low brick structure in the northeast corner that housed the Student Union and a glass box in the Southwest corner dating from the 70s. The original building were built of grey limestone, stood three stories tall with peaked, slate roofs. Their entrances were built in a Gothic revival style with a pointed arch over the door, which itself was recessed twenty feet. A balcony above the arch was filled with various statues. The collection of sheep, goats, chicken and cows suggest that the Theater Arts building had once been the Agricultural building. Hanging from from one of the balustrades was a skinny man, all arms and legs. His legs were kicking around trying to find a piece of the decorative molding around the entrance to grab on to.

Luann looked around to see if there was anything she could use to help the man, like a ladder, or a table she could climb in to reach him. He was hanging twenty feet up in the air over a flagstone patio. Dropping that far would seriously injury him, or anyone standing under him trying to catch him. Then she saw a glint of sunlight behind him and recognized that a set of windows opened up onto the balcony.

"Hold on,"she called as she ran inside.

"I'm trying," gaped the man.

Inside Luann found two sets of stairs one on either side of the door. They run up towards the sides, took a turn 180 degree turn about half way up before meeting on a broad landing on the second floor. The steps were grey granite, worn into hollows from generations of climbing feet. She took the steps two at a time till she reached the second floor landing. A half dozen steps lead up to the actually second floor. But to her left were a row of tall windows, filled with small squares of glass. Looking around to see how to open them she realized that these were mounted on vertical poles and pivoted out sideways instead of being lifted. She reached for the latch on one and pushed it up after considerable effort. It was like the windows hadn't been opened in years. A hard push got it to swing open enough for her to slip through.

She ran out to the edge and looked down, searching for the dangling man. She reached over the railing to grab his other hand, only to be nearly yanked over when he caught her hand just as his other hand slipped. He struggled a bit, threatening to tear his one hand from Luann's grip but finally got another hold on the balustrade and levered himself up a bit, adjusted his grip on the stone a bit and finally leveraged himself over the top, falling on Luann in a bundle.

They lay there breathing hard for a bit. Luann was drained from panic and the unexpected exertion. The other from sheer exhaustion. As their breaths slowly, the man finally opened his eyes and looked into Luann's blue ones. "Thanks," he stammered. Then after a moment, pushed himself off her, sitting up beside her. "You know, if this were a movie we would be fated to fall in love."

"Excuse me?"

"Because we just 'meet cute' and shared an experience and ... uh... I guess I'm just babbling. I hope I didn't hurt you falling on you like that 'cause I kind of enjoyed falling on you."

Luann gave him a blank look.

"That didn't come out right. I mean..."

"What were you doing up here?" Luann asked, if only to stop his babbling.

"Oh, um, yes. Heathcliff Chancey Bowers, but most people just call me 'Spider'."

"Because of your long legs?"

"No, actually. It's because... I'm an architectural major and I am absolutely fascinated with the detailing of old building. Look at anything built before the 1930s and you'll see in even the most plebian storefront a wealth of little details, ornamentation. It's glorious. Then you look at today's buildings, like that monstrosity over there..." He waved in the general direction of the glass box in the end of the quadrangle. "That's the Friedman School of Architecture. Almost a monument to how not to design a building."

"So you're called 'Spider' because you hate modern architecture?" Luann interrupted.

"No, because I really love architectural detailing, and the only way to really, I mean really, get the felt for the detailing is to reach out and actually touch them. So I climb on buildings - a lot. To see the art really up close. And people say I look like a spider when I do that."

"Do you fall off a lot?"

"What? Oh, no. Not often. And I really, really, **really** do appreci.."

"I'm sure, but I've got to get to class..."

"Of course." The man, Spider, stood up, unfolding like pop-up book. He was really quite tall, then leaned down to offer Luann a hand. "I hope I didn't ruin your clothes."

Luann glanced down at the pants and shirt she was wearing, and dusted off some gravel stuck to them from falling on the balcony. "I'm fine."

"What's your name?" Spider asked, seemingly a little anxiously.

"Luann. Luann DeGroot. Theater major. first year."

"Well, Luann Luann DeGroot, I hope we can run into each other again. Though, perhaps, not quite so dramatically, eh?"

She looked the strange man in the face, He was smiling somewhat uncertainly. "I'm sure we'll run into each other again, Muni's not a big university. Try not to fall off of tall buildings." She darted for the window and ran back downstairs for the backpack she's left outside. When she got back to the second floor, the man was gone.

][

Theater 101 was located on a large room on the second floor. It had a twenty foot tall ceiling but wasn't one of the auditorium style lecture halls like she had for Pre-Calculus. Instead the floor was flat, a portable stage maybe twelve by eighteen feet was positioned in the far center of the room. A desk was pushed to one side of it. Around the edges of the room were a couple dozen student chairs, the kind with the build in writing table. Since the table were designed for right-handed people, Luann, a lefty, always found them irritating awkward to use. She slipped into an unoccupied one and glanced around at the others there. She couldn't say she recognized another one else. Well, maybe one or two other girls looked vaguely familiar, not student from Pitts High, but maybe locals she's seen at the mall or maybe in one of their school productions. She was starting to congratulate herself for having avoided Tiffany Ferral, when her blonde nemesis waltzed into the room and took a chair on the opposite side of the room.

Luann stared daggers at her. Then realized that Tiffany did not look much like Tiffany. Her skin was sallow, her hair dry and frizzie. Her clothes, a skirt and a low cut blouse hung artless from her, but mostly it was the way her face just sort of slumped, like she would rather be anywhere else then here. Luann was used to seeing a proud, smirking Tiffany, queen of all she could see. Tiffany, self-declared Goddess of Pitts High. Must have had a long night of partying, Luann decided. It was hard not to go to a party around here. Everybody was celebrating their first time away from home. Except for those few who were commuting to class from home. Like Luann. Even Bernice has opted for a dorm room. Had wanted Luann to join her but the added cost of the dorm was more than her parents could afford.

The class started getting restive around five minutes after the hour when the professor hadn't arrived. People were arguing whether student were expected to wait five minutes or ten before concluding there would be no class that day. Luann realized with something of a surprise that in college there were no class bells. She was so used to bells telling her when classes began and, more importantly, when they ended, that their silence here was unnerving.

Some of the boys were starting to get up when the professors breezed into the room, holding a stack of papers. "Sorry to disappoint, _but I am here_ ," he told them as he continued to his desk and dumped the papers there with a thud. "I am Professor Townsend, your instructor in the arts thespian. My office is down the hall, room 223. I'm usually there from 10 until 4 excepting during classes."

He picked up one portion of the papers and handed them to the student sitting closest to his desk. "Pass them out, if you please," he told her. "This is a copy of the course syllabus. It outlines what we will be doing this semester, projects that you are expected to do and when they are due. As we are all adults here I don't need to remind you constantly about these deadlines." That brought a rustle of discontent.

Picking up the remainder of the papers, Professor Townsend followed after the student handing these out. "In order to get to know each other better we're going to start today with a cold reading of a short monolog from a variety of popular plays. Some of the speeches may be familiar to you, some may not. You'll have ten minutes to study the speech and then we'll go around with a little introduction and a reading. Tomorrow, no Wednesday, we'll begin with a discussion of Chapter I of _The Art of Theater._

Luann picked up the copy of her speech. It was from Death of a Salesman, a play she'd never gone to because it sounded to morbid. The speech as by an old man talking about the failures that hounded his life. She tried to think of some old man she'd heard complaining about life. She drew a blank. She tried thinking of how her father sounded at the end of day, coming home from work? She couldn't remember him ever sounding tired or depressed. Maybe he was just happy to be away from work. Then she thought of the perfect model: her brother Brad. Before becoming a fireman he had worked at the Weinerworld fast food joint and every day when he'd come home he would slump on the couch and groan about what a rotten day he'd had. The manager didn't like him, the customers were slobs. Of course she couldn't use her brothers nasally, whiney voice but now that she had an idea she could easily fake an old man's voice.

At the end of ten minutes the professor pulled out a stack of four by six inch file cards, shuffled them like adeck of cards, and laid the top one face up on his table. "Rebbeca Smith," he called out. "Please stand up and tell us a little about yourself."

A woman in black yoga pants, baggy black sweater and a black beret stood up. After giving a brief account of herself, she read a soliloquy from Shakespeare. Professor Townsend made some notes on the card during her introduction and again after her reading. He thanked her, turned over another card and called out the name on it. And they went around the room. Luann gave her speech, and sat down concerned that the professor was writing lot more on her card than the others. The only one he wrote a longer note was for a Harold Hemmacker, an older student, a junior or senior, whereas the rest were freshmen. He announced that he was a chemistry major and had taken the class to experience something different from Chem. He stammered his way through his reading. After writing extensively on the 4 by 6, Professor Townsend regarded, "You know you can drop a class any time during the first two weeks." He didn't say anything more but it hung in the air ominously.

Eventually they came around to Tiffany. She stood up, stared at the floor while she talk and read her passage. She spoke in a monotone and got lost on the page once or twice. As much as she disliked Tiffany Luann had never heard Tiff give such a poor reading. "What's wrong with her?" she wondered, then forgot about it as the next student was called.

And, though there were fifteen minutes remaining to the class, after the last reading, the professor asked for the photocopies to be turned in and dismissed the class.

Outside, and with time before the start of her next class, Luann turned on her phone and checked for messages. The university has been very particular about turning off cell phones during class. From the way other students were constantly checking their phones they must have been there during that part of Orientation. There was just one message, from Bernice, inviting - almost ordering - her to come to a study session at the campus library later that day. It seemed odd to have a study group on the first day of classes when the professors hadn't made any assignments yet. But... whatever.

][

The sun was westering in the hot August sky by the time Luann got out of her last class. She crossed the quadrangle to the library. Statues of the nine Muses filled the balcony over the entrance. The old, massive wooden doors common to the other older buildings had been replaced by modern glass double doors, with RFID scanner flanking the doors on the inside. this was only concession to the modern age. The central room on the main floor was cavernous, with a warren of card catalogs to one side (maintained by the library science classes as part of their training. The floors were worn, oak, as was the librarian's desk and the scattering of reading tables and the shelves built into the walls. Stairs, the twin to the ones in the Theater Arts building lead upstairs where everything was different. The shelves were metal, computer carrels were everywhere and along the side were a series of study room, smallish room with a table, four chairs and a computer set-up. The doors had a large glass panel to prevent hanky-panky and the lights were constantly on.

Luann found the room she was looking for on the west side towards the back. "Bernice!" she exclaimed, opening the door "I have had such a..."

She stopped as she saw the other occupant in the room.

"Delta!" she shouted and rushed over to the black girl in the corner, enveloping her in a hug.

"Easy, girl," Delta replied. "I'm a bit fragile."

Luann stepped back with a "huh" then saw the large knit cap Delta was wearing. The black girl pushed it up a bit to expose a bald head. "What happened?"

"The lymphoma came back," Delta said with a shrug. "Howard started a week before Muni so I was attending my first class there. Went to stand up and woke up in an ambulance being hustled to the research hospital across town. They wanted to start chemotherapy down there right away but I decided if i was going to be sick to my stomach for half a year I'd rather be sick among my friends. Besides I liked the staff that did my chemo the last time. So Howard allowed me to come back and take some of my prerequisites here."

"Oh, I am so sorry," Luann husked as she sat down in an open chair.

"Don't be. Stuff happens. And this way I get to see my friends for a while longer."

"If there's anything I can do..." Luann began.

Delta laughed. "Girl, I am so going to bugging you for stuff. I'll need a driver for chemo. Someone to hold my shoulder when I have to throw up. Someone to take my tests..." she trailed off with another laugher. "By the time this is over, you'll probably be the happiest person to see me go back to Howard..."

"Never! When did you get back?"

"She called me yesterday," Bernice answered. "Knocked me off my feet. Wanted to surprise you as well, so I arrange for this 'study date.'"

"Oh, you got me good. I know you weren't there long but what is Howard like?"

"God, it was wonderful," Delta began. "No offense to you and Bernice, but there's something to not being the only black girl in class. Everyone there was my brother, my sister. I felt uninhibited in a way I never was here. I never even knew how inhibited I'd been in what I'd say until I was there. You two are still my best friends, don't get me wrong. It's like going from being the only girl in a classroom full of boys to going to a classroom of all girls. It's different, wonderfully different."

They chatted a while longer. Luann was getting into her encounter with the strange Spider person when the door to their study room burst open and Tiffany slumped into the last remaining chair. "Oh, God, I am so glad to see you guys," she began with a groan, dumping her books on the table them slumping down in her chair. "It's just been awful! Nobody will talk to me, they treat me like I'm not there. The Captain of the cheerleading staff said I had to try out, and only for the junior varsity squad. Me! in JV?"

"Life is rough," Luann sniped.

"You know," Bernice put in, " that we've gone from being the top of High School society to being the bottom of college society. It's just like when we were High School freshmen. We're going to have to work our way up."

"Uuuugh!"

""If you hate college that much, why did you enroll?" Luann asked.

"My dad insisted. I wanted to go to Hollywood and begin working on my movie career. The Old Man said I had to go to college first. 'Learn a career'; make something of myself. A pretty face like mine has a limited shelf-life and he's robbing me of the best four years of my life!"

At the moment, the way Tiffany looked, the only roles she'd be able to get involved the Zombie Apocalypse.

Luann was trying to figure a way to get out of the small room when Tiffany sudden shot up, grabbed her purse and ran out of the room. "Potty break," she explained as the door closed behind her.

][

It was a different Tiff who returned. Her eyes, which had been half-lidded and dull were wide open and sparkling. Her hair was combed, fresh make-up applied to her face, her clothes brushed into something resembling presentability and her gait was clipped and bouncy. "It's been great talking with ya," she announced as she gathered up her book, "but I've got a thousand things to do. See ya around." She sweep out the door like the Big Woman on Campus she imagined herself to be.

"What was that all about? Delta wondered.

"Don't know. Don't Care," was Luann's answer.


End file.
